Among conventional heat cookers is one which includes an exhaust fan for discharging smoke or steam from within a heating compartment out of the heating compartment as described in JP 2007-10189 A (PTL 1). The exhaust fan is not driven during heat cooking of a heating object, which is an item to be heated, but driven when the door of the heating compartment is opened after completion of the heat cooking of the heating object. By the drive of the exhaust fan, smoke or steam in the heating compartment is discharged outside through an exhaust opening positioned apart from the door.
However, in this conventional heat cooker, since the exhaust fan is driven after completion of heat cooking of the heating object, the smoke or steam filled in the heating compartment is blown off at a burst from the exhaust opening.
As a result, there has been an issue that smoke or steam discharged from within the heating compartment after completion of heat cooking of the heating object becomes noticeable.
In such a case, merging an exhaust air stream going out of the heating compartment with other air streams indeed allows the steam to be diluted so as to become less noticeable to some degree, but the smoke is hard to dilute and clearly viewable.